Bush Administration

Bush trip called off amid threats of protests, legal action

A planned trip to Switzerland by George W. Bush in February was canceled after human rights activists called for demonstrations and threatened legal action over allegations that the former president sanctioned the torture of terrorism suspects. The New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights and several European human rights groups said they were planning to file a complaint against Bush and wanted Swiss prosecutors to open a criminal case against him once he arrived in the country.

Although Bush had traveled to Canada, Brazil, China, Japan, South Korea and the Middle East since leaving office., it would have been his first European trip. He was scheduled to speak in Geneva on February 12 at a dinner in honor of the United Israel Appeal. A lawyer for the organization said Bush’s appearance was canceled because of the risk of violence, and that the threat of legal action was not an issue. Organizers of a rally outside the Hotel Wilson, where the speech was scheduled to take place, had called on demonstrators to each bring a shoe, an effort to echo the assault on Bush during a news conference in Baghdad in 2008 when an Iraqi journalist threw a shoe at him.

The Center for Constitutional Rights said in a statement that they had planned to bring 2,500-page legal complaint under the Convention Against Torture on behalf of two of men, Majid Khan, who remains at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and Sami al-Hajj, a former Al Jazeera cameraman who was released in May 2008. “Whatever Bush or his hosts say, we have no doubt he canceled his trip to avoid our case,” the Center’s statement said. “The message from civil society is clear: If you’re a torturer, be careful in your travel plans. It’s a slow process for accountability, but we keep going.”

A Swiss Foreign Ministry spokesman told the Associated Press that the country's Justice Ministry had concluded that Bush would have immunity from prosecution for any alleged actions while in office. The Center for Constitutional Rights disputed that interpretation, arguing there is no such immunity under the Convention Against Torture.

The Center, and its European partners, earlier filed suits against former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other Bush administration officials in Germany and France. Those cases were dismissed.

– edited from The Washington Post, February 5, 2011
PeaceMeal, March/April 2011

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Complaint filed with ICC against Bush, Cheney, et al.
International arrest warrants requested for crimes against humanity

Francis A. Boyle, a professor of international law at the University of Illinois in Champaign, has filed a complaint with the prosecutor for the International Criminal Court (I.C.C.) in The Hague, Netherlands, against George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, George Tenet, Condoleezza Rice and Alberto Gonzales. The complaint cites the “Accused” for their policy and practice of extraordinary rendition perpetrated upon about 100 human beings and constituting Crimes against Humanity in violation of the Rome Statute that established the I.C.C. The Complaint requests that the I.C.C. prosecutor open an investigation of the Accused himself and also submit a request for authorization of an investigation to the pre-trial chamber.“Extraordinary rendition” is a euphemism for the forced disappearance of persons and their subsequent torture by other States.

Although the United States is not a party to the Rome Statute, the Accused have ordered and been responsible for the commission of the alleged statutory crimes within the respective territories of many I.C.C. member states, including several in Europe. This gives the I.C.C. jurisdiction to prosecute the Accused under the Rome Statute.

The complaint further states: “Unfortunately, the new Obama administration in the United States has made it perfectly clear by means of public statements by President Obama and his Attorney General Eric Holder that they are not going to open any criminal investigation of any of the Accused for these aforementioned Crimes against Humanity.” Moreover, they have continued the Accused’s policy and practice of extraordinary rendition and, thereby, risk the filing of a follow-up Complaint with the I.C.C.

The Complaint concludes with a request that the I.C.C. prosecutor obtain international arrest warrants for the Accused. in accordance with several articles of the Rome Statute.

– edited from Information Clearing House, January 20, 2010
PeaceMeal, Jan/February 2010

State of Disunion 2008

The Jan. 28 address of Pres. George W. Bush was woefully short on specifics about the State of the Union. But that very day, the Center for American Progress and its MicCheck Radio service published a list of the Top 99 problems facing the United States. Here are a few highlights:

• Even as the huge Iraq war debt piled up and the multi-national oil companies raked in record profits, the White House fought to make sure big-oil kept both $7.6 billion in tax subsidies and the legal loophole that lets them dodge paying $10.7 billion in royalties for oil extracted from U.S. public lands in the Gulf of Mexico. Meanwhile, the U.S.-average price of a gallon of gasoline rose from $1.36 in January 2001, when President Bush took office, to $3.26 in January 2008 — and all without an actual shortage of gasoline!

• Instead of raising taxes to pay for his war of aggression in Iraq, one of President Bush’s strategies to make the war palatable has been to ply the voters with multiple tax cuts — cuts which favored the wealthy. From 2003 to 2005, the increase alone in income for the richest one percent of Americans was greater than the total income of the poorest 20 percent. Experience has shown that “trickle down” tax cuts work only to concentrate the nation’s wealth into fewer hands and never help to rebound the economy. The combination of tax cuts and war spending pushed the gross national debt from $5.7 trillion in 2001 to $9.2 trillion in 2008 — the steepest increase of debt in U.S. history.

• There are 4.9 million more Americans living in poverty today than there were in 2000, with 1.2 million of them children. According to the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, the number of hungry families in the United States rose 26 percent between 2001 and 2006. The USDA attempted to sugarcoat the issue by banning the word “hunger” from official documents, replacing it with the less intelligible “very low food security.”

• In 2006, U.S. health care costs spiraled to an all-time high of over $2 trillion (or $7,000 per person). In a report by the World Health Organization, the U.S. ranks 37th in health care quality, despite spending more per person than any other country in the world. There were 47 million Americans living without health insurance in 2006 — 8.6 million more uninsured than there were in 2000.

The complete list, with sources, can be viewed at: http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/01/99problems.html

– PeaceMeal, Jan/February 2008

Diplomats cite Bush policy in refusing Iraq duty

Nearly half of U.S. diplomats unwilling to volunteer to work in Iraq say one reason for their refusal is they don’t agree with the Bush administration’s policies in the country, according to a survey released January 8 by the American Foreign Service Association, the union that represents U.S. diplomats. Security concerns and separation from family ranked as the top reasons for not wanting to serve in Iraq, but 48 percent cited “disagreement” with administration policy as a factor in their opposition. Furthermore, nearly 70 percent of U.S. diplomats who responded to the survey oppose forced assignments to Iraq, a prospect that sparked a storm of controversy last year when the State Department announced it might have to require such tours under penalty of dismissal in the largest diplomatic call-up to a war zone since Vietnam. One diplomat drew applause at a town hall meeting when he likened such tours to a “potential death sentence.”

The results suggest the State Department may be facing a far more serious revolt over Iraq among its ranks than previously thought, and call into question its ability to fully staff diplomatic missions in Iraq, as well as those in Afghanistan and other dangerous posts deemed critical to the administration’s foreign policy goals. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack dismissed the findings, noting that the poll was “self-selective” and not necessarily reflective of the entire foreign service. Union officials countered that the survey was not intended to be a scientific poll but was rather aimed at getting a general sense of where its membership stands on the issues.

The survey was conducted late last year among the 11,500 members of the U.S. diplomatic corps and found deep frustration among 4,311 respondents over Iraq, safety and security issues elsewhere, pay disparities, and the leadership of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her top deputies. “The results of this survey raise serious questions about the long-term health of the Foreign Service and, with it, the future viability of U.S. diplomatic engagement,” said union President John Naland. The survey found 44 percent of respondents are “less likely to remain” in the foreign service until retirement due to developments in those areas over the past few years.

McCormack declined to comment on the implications of the percentage who said they had policy differences, but noted that “when we signed up for these jobs, we signed up to support the policies of the American government. If people have a problem with that, they know what they can do.”

– edited from The Associated Press, January 8, 2008
PeaceMeal, Jan/February 2008

‘I’ word use is now bipartisan

Voices as disparate as Democratic dove, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, and Republican Vietnam veteran, Sen. Chuck Hagel, are voicing the “I” word: impeachment. With President Bush’s go-it-alone approach on Iraq and military buildup for a possible attack on Iran, he is flouting Congress and the public, so angering lawmakers that some consider impeachment an option over his war policy.

In the April edition of Esquire magazine, Sen. Hagel of Nebraska, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, described Bush as someone who doesn’t believe he’s accountable to anyone. “He’s not accountable anymore, which isn’t totally true. You can impeach him, and before this is over, you might see calls for his impeachment. I don’t know. It depends on how this goes,” Hagel told the magazine.

Sen. Hagel also spoke March 25 on ABC’s This Week. “Any president who says, I don’t care, or I will not respond to what the people of this country are saying about Iraq or anything else, or I don’t care what the Congress does, I am going to proceed — if a president really believes that, then there are — what I was pointing out, there are ways to deal with that,” said Hagel, who is considering a 2008 presidential run.

A frequent critic of the Iraq war, Sen. Hagel added, “We have clearly a situation where the president has lost the confidence of the American people in his war effort. It is now time, going into the fifth year of that effort, for the Congress to step forward and be part of setting some boundaries and some conditions as to our involvement.”

In remarks Rep. Kucinich made March 15 on the floor of the U.S. House, he stated, “This House cannot avoid its Constitutionally authorized responsibility to restrain the abuse of Executive power. The Administration has been preparing for an aggressive war against Iran. There is no solid, direct evidence that Iran has the intention of attacking the United States or its allies.”

Rep. Kucinich pointed out that “the U.S. is a signatory to the U.N. Charter, a constituent treaty among the nations of the world. Article II, Section 4 of the U.N. Charter states, ‘all members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state .. .’ Even the threat of a war of aggression is illegal.”

Furthermore, “Article VI of the U.S. Constitution makes such treaties the Supreme Law of the Land. This Administration has openly threatened aggression against Iran in violation of the U.S. Constitution and the U.N. Charter.”

Rep. Kucinich concluded: “Since war with Iran is an option of this Administration and since such war is patently illegal, then impeachment may well be the only remedy which remains to stop a war of aggression against Iran.”

“This is not a monarchy,” Sen Hagel added, referring to the possibility of seeking impeachment. “There are ways to deal with it. And I would hope the president understands that.”

– edited from www.afterdowningstreet.org and Associated Press
PeaceMeal, March/April 2007

Rumsfeld sued for alleged war crimes

Alleging responsibility for war crimes and torture at Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison and the Guant�namo, Cuba, detention center, a human rights group has filed a criminal complaint in Germany against former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other top U.S. officials. The New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and Berlin’s Republican Lawyers’ Association said they and 12 victims of torture by U.S. soldiers — that included electric shock, severe beatings, sleep and food deprivation, and sexual abuse — were seeking an investigation by the German Federal Prosecutor of leading U.S. policymakers.

The charges were formulated according to standards laid down for the International Court of Justice at The Hague. The plaintiffs said they chose Germany because of its 2002 Code of Crimes Against International Law, which grants German courts universal jurisdiction in cases involving war crimes or crimes against humanity. It also makes liable military or civilian commanders who fail to prevent their subordinates from committing such acts.

“We filed these cases here because there is simply no other place to go,” CCR vice president Peter Weiss said in a statement, adding that the U.S. Congress had failed to seriously investigate the abuse allegations against these officials. The CCR noted that, while several U.S. soldiers were facing court martial for the abuse and sexual humiliation of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, their superiors appeared set to escape punishment. CCR specifically cited passage of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 in the U.S. granting officials retroactive immunity from prosecution for war crimes.

The complaint names Rumsfeld, former CIA director George Tenet, former Chief White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Steven Cambone, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez and others.

“From Donald Rumsfeld on down, the political and military leaders in charge of Iraq policy must be investigated and held accountable,” CCR president Michael Ratner said in a statement issued in Frankfurt, Germany. It noted that Sanchez and other officers involved in the case were based in Germany.

A previous lawsuit was dismissed in February 2005 under alleged pressure from the United States government. This second lawsuit is based on the fact that, with his resignation from office, Mr. Rumsfeld no longer can claim immunity. It is also based on new evidence, such as provided by former brigadier general and Abu Ghraib commander Janis Karpinski, on the tortures and other crimes. Janis Karpinski is now a witness for the plaintiffs. Her 17-page testimony, along with that of other witnesses, is available on the CCR website: www.ccr-ny.org

Germany’s federal prosecutor now has to decide whether the case warrants further investigation.

– edited from Deutsche Welle and the CCR website
PeaceMeal, Nov/December 2006